The Moment Things Change
by SignsofSam
Summary: This was the first time Nathan had wanted Christmas to come. This was the moment things changed for him. Forever. AU Xmas oneshot, Nathan-centric as per usual for me by now.


**Title: **The Moment Things Change

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _One Tree Hill_. I do not own the characters. I do own the plot.

**Word Count:**~2600 words

**Summary: **This was the first time Nathan had _wanted _Christmas to come. This was the moment things changed for him. Forever. _AU Xmas oneshot, Nathan-centric as per usual_

**Author's Notes:** I've been working on this for awhile, and while it's not exactly what I was hoping for, I'm hoping you all like it. Please review. Oh, fyi, animals are my life, so it's pretty much natural that when I associate something to go with good and happiness, it would have to be an animal (plus, my poor doggy is at the vet having eye surgery, so I felt that this is my much needed vent for some pent-up worry). Enjoy, and happy holidays...

Nathan_ hated _Christmas.

Not many people knew that; certainly no one in thisswanky town of Tree Hill did. It was a bunch of bad memories on top of bad experiences on top of bad…everything. Everything about Christmas reminded him of the world he grew up in, from the toys he always saw in store windows but never got, to the decorations he made that simply got thrown into the trashcan later.

He wasn't always that way. He could remember vague times, probably when he was three or four, when there was a tree and a couple of presents (not too many, but they were gifts of love that were definitely okay) and a nice dinner, friends and laughing and caroling around the neighborhood. Those were the memories he relied on when everything got too bad and he just need to…escape.

He hated Christmas for many reasons. On his fifth Christmas, his dad got called in to the factory where he worked and was fired. He couldn't remember a lot from that, only the yelling and screaming a couple of nights beforehand as his parents argued about the stability of the household, about how his father planned on getting another job, about how '_we have a young boy in there who's going to need __**money **__to live and if you can't provide that you should-well, you need to provide it._' He wasn't sure what a lot of those words had meant at that point in time, but he knew that look that his mother had given him as she tucked him into bed that night, putting his new action figure on the bedside table. It was a look of sadness, of disappointment.

It was the first time he could ever remember being sad on Christmas.

On his sixth Christmas, his father never came home, and when it neared midnight, as he and his mother sat in front of the extremely small tree they were able to afford (now he calls it the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree, but back then he thought it was beautiful), there was a knock on the door. His mother looked at him wearily, offered a tired smile (and tired she was-she had just come off a double shift at the diner she worked at), and went to answer the door. Two men stood at the door, dour faces and all as they removed their hats and politely moved inside, out of the cold. His mom had looked hopefully at them; maybe her husband was in jail, drunk, or something, but the hope died as she was told _'your husband was involved in an armed robbery attempt this afternoon and was shot to death after he fired at officers'_.

It was the first time he could ever remember crying on Christmas.

By his seventh Christmas, things had changed. They had moved out of the house his father had bought, into a small apartment on the other side of town with locks that barely locked, a leak in the ceiling from the room upstairs, and absolutely no insulation. He hated that apartment; his room was a closet off to the side of the bathroom, nearly forgotten about. That year, there were no decorations and no presents; what was worse, his mother had been absent.

It was the first time he had been disappointed on Christmas. The first time, but in no means the last.

His eighth Christmas, he barely even remembered that it _was_ Christmas. His mother had started leaving bottles around the house; empty bottles of vodka and scotch, the cheap stuff she could buy at the liquor store down at the intersection for four or five dollars. He had picked up each bottle carefully, deposited them in the trash, and then had seen the card from the credit card company: _and though you're past due and we are beginning processes to seek out the money owed to us, we wish you happy holidays and hope you're life gets back on track _(well, not exactly like that, but in Nathan's mind it should have said that). He had reached in, cutting his hand on the sharp edge of a piece of broken glass, and he had crumbled the paper as tears began to fall.

This was the first time he knew that there would never again be any sort of regular Christmas on Christmas.

His ninth Christmas changed his life completely. That was the Christmas he was taken away from his mother. They had moved again by that time, into a dingy one room studio in a decrepit neighborhood in downtown Raleigh. Her boyfriend-if you could call him that-was staying with them, and he hit Nathan _all the time_. It hurt, a lot, and he remembered various hospital trips with various fake names and fake cards and fake insurance to pay for real injuries. His mother was so hopped up on the drugs and alcohol by then that she could care less if he was dead or alive, and the only reason the bills got paid was because the boyfriend sold crack. He could remember finding stores of cash around the apartment, and he always wondered why they didn't use that to get a better living situation in a good neighborhood with good schools and good opportunities.

He had woken up that snowy day to a knock at the door, and he grudgingly got off the couch to open the door, barely glancing into the bedroom, where his mother and her boyfriend were _all _over each other.

Two cops stood outside of the door (he had learned to refer to them as _cops_ in a snide tone) and he walked out closing the door behind him. The conversation afterwards was awkward, about the smell and the noise coming from the apartment and the drug deals they had on tape. It was not like he could explain those. They took him that day, took him to a cold brick building and left him in an office waiting.

This was the first time he truly forgot it was Christmas.

His tenth and eleventh Christmases were spent in a foster home on the outskirts of town. There were four of them crammed into an eight-by-twelve room: him, Lucas, Skillz, Mouth, and they bonded then. Lucas and Skillz taught him how to play basketball on the falling basket at the end of the cul-de-sac down the road, and he and Lucas constantly whipped the other two at a friendly game.

They also spent the night trying to stay away from their foster father, who started drinking at five when he got home and didn't stop until after midnight. Mouth usually got the rotten end, he was smaller and weaker and had a past history of abuse, so much worse than Nathan's, but the others protected him as best they could. There was little fanfare about Christmas, usually a small tree that Judy, his foster mom, planted in the middle of the living room in attempts to show some holiday spirit (yeah right). His tenth Christmas, his present was a black eye and a swollen lip. His eleventh one, he was removed from the house.

Those were the first times he wished he had forgotten it was Christmas.

His twelfth and thirteenth Christmases were good compared to the ones before them. Lucas and he had been moved to a group home then, a nice, clean place, where they shared a room with nobody and where their caretakers were halfway nice. Lilly had a seven foot tree put in the foyer, and it reminded Nathan of that time before his father lost his job. It reminded him of hope.

There were even presents then.

It was his fourteenth Christmas when things began to tumble. Lucas got adopted, and went away. The girl he had gotten close to, Haley, had gone to live with her brother in a tiny town called Tree Hill. He had been moved to a crummy foster home that had resemblance to the first one. He spent Christmas Eve being beat for not looking after the younger kids, though he had tried to remind _those_ people that the kids weren't _his _responsibility.

Christmas Day found him outside, in the lot behind the house, just wondering what life would have been like without all the pain and anger and hate and disappointment (mostly in himself) built up inside. That's where the neighbor kid found him, and that's where the neighbor kid sat patiently, and finally, that's where the neighbor kid offered him a hit off the blunt he had in his hands. Nathan took one hit, then two, and somehow found himself waking up the next day in some girl's bed, with her running her hands all over his body and with him panicking and fishing for clothes has she tried to persuade him to stay in the bed. He hated to tell her that he was just fourteen and she looked like she was hitting thirty.

It was the first time he could remember ever forgetting the events of Christmas. He was glad he didn't; he wasn't sure he could handle the knowledge of what _actually_ happened (though he had a good idea).

His fifteenth Christmas brought change to his life, again. He met the Scotts the day of the Chrsitmas party, when big CEOs and VIPs flooded the group home he was in (another move that was the consequence of his foster father's abusive actions). Nathan had been outside in a well-worn jacket, shooting baskets, when he missed one wide left. The ball bounced of the cement, sending a few tiny pieces flying, before being caught by a very large pair of hands.

Dan Scott. He had gone out to get a little air, leaving his wife to meet and greet the other snobs. The kid who was outside on the chilly night had made him curious, so he cautiously walked to the basket; he knew that most of the kids at the home had some sort of past-abuse issues.

"Can I help you?" Nathan's voice was harsh, critical, his body tense. Dan gave him back his ball, offering a smile, which did not help.

"Sorry. I just…needed a break."

There was a snide laugh, and Dan looked up confused. "Needed a break? From being an arrogant so-called philanthropist who gets his kicks donating to the poor children? Oh poor you."

Dan didn't know how to answer. He wasn't really sure what the kid wanted him to say, so he stayed silent, letting him vent. "Poor pitiful you. At least you have a home, a family, money. For God sakes, if I had money, I wouldn't need _a break_. God, I wouldn't have to explain hospital visits, credit cards with fake names, the damn smell that was coming from my apartment-" He stopped talking then, eyes widening. "Sorry. Didn't mean-"

"Don't worry about it, kiddo. What's your name?"

He laughed again, with that same sarcasm. "You really think that's gonna work? That I'm gonna follow you to your little white van or something? I don't think so."

"I'm not some pervert…"

"Coulda fooled me," Nathan said, making yet another basket; he hadn't missed one since Dan had been out, which was impressive. "Please go away."

"You know, that's some mouth you have on you. You're probably really smart in school, aren't you?"

He was, got straight A's, but the guy didn't need to know that. As for the comment about his mouth, he had heard it all before, from his social worker, his foster mom, his principal, his teacher, Lucas, Haley. He hadn't ever been taught anything different, so he spoke his mind, be it good, be it bad. And especially with this guy, he simply didn't care.

"My name's Dan Scott, if that helps."

Of course he knew Dan Scott. Dan Scott provided the four cars that the home had, and he also provided gas and maintenance. Dan Scott's wife recently donated a bunch of school supplies and clothing to the group home, and the room they did school work in was named after her.

It was just his luck that he had to be back talking to the man who kept the facility he lived in running.

"I'm Nathan."

Two words. It was his first Christmas in which two words changed the outcome of his future.

Here he was on his sixteenth Christmas, watching the glowing red lights from the nine foot tree in the main entrance's foyer of the Scott house, a small smile on his face.

He jumped as a hand touched his shoulder, but the fear turned to happiness when he saw Karen. "Hey," he whispered, and she smiled back, kissing his forehead. "What?"

"You look happy, Nate." They had been fostering him since January, and in March, there was a final hearing for his adoption. He was rare, his social worker said; most sixteen-year-olds wouldn't get adopted, and especially not by anyone like the Scotts. They were so kind to him, so understanding. Dan would play basketball with him when he was angry, allowing him to vent the anger into the game. He was almost like a real father, certainly better than Nathan's actual father, and he made sure Nathan had everything he could possibly need.

Karen was the one that had healed Nathan emotionally. She was the only one who knew about his Christmases' past, and she was the one who refused to hear that he deserved what he got. She was the one that reminded him that children didn't deserve the wrath of their parents. While Dan was the one who convinced her to foster this child (and was she glad he did), she was the one that had started the adoption proceedings.

"So, what are you hoping for for Christmas?" she whispered, making him jump from his memories back into reality. He shook his head, and her smile grew, taking his hand to lead him to the living room. "We were going to wait until tonight, or tomorrow, but we can't. It's one of your Christmas presents."

"Karen, I told you you didn't have to get me anything. This is the best Christmas I've ever had…that's enough."

Karen laughed, opening the door, and stepping back as he stepped forward, eyes widening when he saw the black lab dog playing with a toy in the floor, by a bed. He was a year old, and Nathan easily recognized him as the dog he had bonded to at the animal shelter he volunteered at. "Karen…"

"Well, we knew that you were attached, and therefore we were attached so we adopted him. He's been so sweet for the past three days…" Dan murmured from his chair, where he had another toy for the dog. "You didn't even know we had him.

"You could have totally fooled me," Nathan admitted, stepping forward, the dog instantly jumping up, running to him. "It's mine, right? Like, I don't ever have to give him back?"

This was the sad part, when Nathan felt like everything he got would somehow be taken away. "Of course not. Never."

This was the first time Nathan had _wanted _Christmas to come. This was the moment things changed for him. Forever.


End file.
